Don't want to be an American idio.
There's Radio seven hundred WLW Mike Allen in for Slowne today, be in for Willie tomorrow. On today being Thanksgiving Eve, I'm sure everybody's thinking about either getting out of town for a little bit or just hanging around the house with friends, stuffing yourself. That will be my choice this year. It's a good holiday. I like it. It comes on a Thursday, and almost everybody takes Friday off, but not me, not this year at any rate. A lot going on
with respect to Thanksgiving. But the one thing that I wanted to talk a little bit about this morning is according to the President, Thanksgiving is going to be a lot cheaper this year. This again is from the White House, so you know, I mean, I think there's stuff accurate, but maybe puffing it up a little bit. Retailers offering
their cheapest Thanksgiving meals in years. Walmart's Thanksgiving meal cost twenty five percent less than it last year, with its lowest turkey price since twenty nineteen.
The meal feeds ten people, which works out to just under four bucks a person.
Now, I've never priced anything like that, but that surprises me that I thought it would be much even of inflation aside, much more than that. But this thing from Walmart's the meal feeds ten people, which works out to just under four bucks per person. Leady l I d Ella little. I guess that's a grocery chain obviously. Not here, their Thanksgiving meal costs ten dollars less than last year. In all these their meal costs seven dollars less than
last year. Lowest priced since twenty nineteen, Target, or Tarja as we call it on the West Side.
That's it.
It's lowest price ever. As well, it looks like it's the lowest price for turkey in over fifteen years, at least according to the White House. So I mean some good news there. And I'll tell you don't need a newspaper or a news story to know stuff is expensive, man. I mean, things are getting cheaper, but it's really really expensive. I mean there's some times when I go to buy stuff, I can't believe how much it is. But under President Trump, it's trending down somewhat. So I guess that's a good
news in that. Let's see, Yeah, the Thanksgiving me twenty five percent less than last year. Again, I'd love to know what's in that box. You know what I've done a couple of times. I haven't done it in about three or four years, is fry my turkey. Went out and got one of those that looks like a small garbage can thing. You fill it up with vegetable oil. You've got to be really careful and you got to
watch it put it in there. My recollection is, I don't know, it's about forty to fifty minutes or something like that. If you do it right, which I was fortunate enough to do when I used to do it, it is unbelievable and I want to do it again someday. Anyway, if you've had an experience with that, I'd like to hear from you. Seven four nine, seven thousand, eight hundred the big one are the numbers going to have open
lines from nine thirty to ten. So if you want to weigh in on Thanksgiving or anything else for that matter, you can do it. Then some interesting and I know everybody does this, but I don't know. I think people enjoy it. Some interesting facts about Thanksgiving and sing in a little bit the Native American view of it. It's a national holiday and this is from AI. I'll tell you what.
I use AI a lot. I've found it to be accurate.
They always give both sides of the coin, which you can't ask for more than that.
But anyway, according to.
AI, Thanksgiving is a national holiday that some Native Americans view as a national day of mourning because of its origins and the historical oppression of Indigenous peoples, while Indigenous People's Day is a holiday that specifically celebrates Native American and other indigenous cultures and histories. You know, I don't have any problem with an Indigenous People Day. As a matter of fact, I think we probably ought to have one, but I think we ought to separate it from Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is what it is and what it's been for I think goes back to eighteen sixty five.
I mean, but.
I got to be care for what I say here, but I'm gonna say it. If ever there was a group of people in this country that were screwed, it's Native Americans. I mean, there's just no way around it. And you know, through the years, I believe there's been reparations to them and government support for a lot of things. But what an incredibly proud people. And I don't know, I mean, maybe I think they've done this before, likeness on a coin or something like that. But again I
say keep just keep it separate. Anyway, Thanksgiving with free from the perspective of the Native American some of them, not all, not all. I did my homework on this referred to it as a national day of mourning. For many Indigenous people, Thanksgiving is a day to commemorate, let's see the genocide, displacement, and cultural erasure of their ancestors. This is why some refer to it as the national Day of Morning or un Thanksgiving, and they hold protests
and ceremonies. Well, I tell you something, AI, I've never seen that. I've never seen a protest, and I watched stuff pretty carefully from Native American people or anybody else with respect to Thanksgiving.
I mean, it's it's just not there. It's just not there anyway.
Traditional narrative, I mean, the one that we have been dealing with and believing for as long as I've been alive, and well before that mainstream Thanksgiving story portrays a harmonious harvest feast in sixteen twenty one shared by English pilgrims.
And the wamp I want to get this right.
Wamp A no ogg try tribe. Here's the story, because I've read a lot about this just in the last couple of days. Apparently the and I just hope I get this right. The Wampanoa tribe heard they heard some gunshots coming from a settlement where some of the settlers were. And believe it or not, this Indian tribe or Native American tribe whatever had an agreement, a mutual defense agreement with the settlers, and so they rode in in defense
of the settlers. Well, anyway, whatever happened happened, and that's when Thanksgiving feast happened. So I don't know, it's just again, I don't think we should screw with Thanksgiving being when it is. But I have no problem with recognizing Native Americans in this country. Now, I've done a lot of research on this, and I did try to find a poll, and I found one, but it was really old, a poll that talks about whether American Indians prefer being called
American Indians or Indigenous people. It was about fifty to fifty. But you know, with respect to the you know, like football teams and monuments and things like that, the numbers are pretty overwhelming. Where Native American people could care less, and some of them actually support it as a tribute, and I don't know, I think that's maybe how people should look at it. Well, let's do this. Let's take
a short break. If you want to call, seven four nine, seven thousand, one, eight hundred the big one are the numbers. We'll get you on Mike Allen in for Slowey seven hundred WLW, NWNE twenty one News Radio, seven hundred WLW, Mike Allen in for Sloaney today and I'll be in for Willly noon to three tomorrow. Yeah, I just mentioned the Bengals game Thursday, Thursday at It's a night game eight on NBC. Bengals Ravens. Here's the thing, and I'm going to get to the calls here in just a second.
Maybe some of you had helped me with this too. Seven four nine, seven eight hundred, The big one are the numbers. Okay, Joe Burrow apparently is going to start. He wants to start. I guess he's chomping at the bit from what I've heard and what I've read. But I mean, I don't know. I guess my thinking is this the season's gone. I mean, come on, there's no way they're going to get into the playoffs. They're just not going to do it. You know, a Joe Flacco has done one hell of a job. I mean, there's
just no way around that. I guess, why risk it? Why risk it? I mean, you know, the Bengals for better or worse, and I don't think it was for the better. Pretty much. The team is Joe Burrow and some receivers and that's it. They need to focus on the defense. But I don't know i'd be interested in what you think about that. I love watching Joe Burrow play, but I also like watching Flacco play as well. So we'll see what happens. But on the way in this
morning the news reports, words sounded that pretty definite. Okay, as promised, let's go to the calls. Randy, Hello, Randy, Good morning, Mike.
How you doing.
I'm good?
Happy Thanksgiving me, Happy Thanksgiving to you. Also, I just wanted to comments that you had the reason that Walmart Thanksgiving dinners or lowers because it's a lost leader, right, we believe all this scrap coming out of the White House instead of believe the companies that measure statistics and do this on a full time Pagen start out.
Hey, hey, Randy, are you out in the wind there? Oh? There you are?
Yeh, I am Could you just repeat your last sentence. I'm sorry, I don't think people got it.
Yeah. I was just saying that the reason that the prices are cheap at Walmart because it's a lost leader right.
To get people into the store.
Right. Yeah, I think we should say that the White House is coming up with something that is really meaningful and it's correct. Well, let me ask like everything else that's comes out of the lighthouse.
Right, well, well, let me ask you something.
If the situation were different, uh, and things were up, of course, like they were under Joe Biden. I mean, would you be saying, you know that, Hey, wait a minute, you know it's not that bad and ain't Biden's fault. I do understand what you're saying. And there's a lot of puffery in this stuff, and I take that into consideration. But what the hell? I mean, what's inflation at three and a half percent? It got all the way up to I think nine under Biden? And you know what
the thing of it is from. And I don't know much about economics at all, but I think what I do know is the president doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with it. And if the economy is good, the president reaps the benefits. If it's bad, the president takes the hits. I don't know, what do you think about that?
Yeah, I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I think the reason that inflation was so high in the Biden was because of COVID. People blamed Biden for inflation, but every industrialized evopnation in the world was having record inflation, but yet we blamed Biden for it. Well, but UK was having inflation, China, everybody.
I don't know that they had it as bad as us. But you're right, Well, if you want to point the finger of Biden, you're right. I mean, he puts so much money. He just pumped so much money into the economy. Uh, you know, the COVID packages and things like that. And you know, I support people. I mean, I'm a problem at all with him helping out, but all that dough into the system is one of the things that many people say caused it. But at any rate, I sure
hope the damn things going down now. You do have to admit gas prices are down substantially.
Well, That's another thing when you say that, you know, we blame the president for the economic situation when they're not responsible for it. It's the same thing with gas prices. You know, we had the highest gas prices. People think we had the highest gas prices under Biden. And if you applied just a two percent inflation rate to what we had in two thousand and eight under George Bush, the average gas price would have been like five dollars
a gallon. And when people blamed George Bush in two thousand and eight for the high gas prices, all he did is he shrugged his shoulders and just I don't control the gas prices. And that was the end of it. You know, under Biden we got this whole thing about gas prices. And another reason gas prices spiked so much under Biden.
It's just because reality that the president takes the blame or gets the credit.
Hey, listen, I appreciate the call.
Serious, seriously, Okay, than thank.
You very much. You know, I like it when people call and disagree with me. I don't get a lot of that on Saturdays, but I try. Let's talk to Rob in Lebanon. Hey, good morning, Rob.
Good morning, Happy Thanksgiving.
Good to talk to you.
We doo.
In the early eighties, I attended Colorado State and on a work study program. So part of the deal was I had to do work study jobs during the summers, and they were on Indian reservations in eastern Colorado, and the land the reservations were on were rocky, difficult to grow crops. They were the most respectful people I'd ever met.
They needed help to get groceries, they needed help to clear fields, while there were thousands of acres around the reservations that were are very easy to grow crops on. So I respect them, and I feel like our country could have treated them a lot better than we did.
I couldn't agree with you more, you know, And they do. They have the casinos now, but that's not the be all to end all. I do think they get a stipend. Do you know what tribe you were just talking about? If you don't, no problem. I was just curious.
There were three different ones.
One was Cherokee, and to be honest, I forget the other two. But they living conditions they lived under were not good, but they did the best they could and they weren't negative about it.
But anyways, they are very, very proud people.
They are.
And anyways, I give them all the respect in the world. They had a tough road.
Hey, man, I'm with you. I'm with you, Rob. The only problem is I'm bumping up against the news. Thank you for the call, though, appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, I do think we should do everything within our power to help the Native Americans, Indians whatever you want to call them. But it's got to be within reason.
But I don't know.
I mean, seeing poverty and things like that, and I've never been on an Indian reservation. We need to take care of those people, but not make them wards of the government. Hey, we got to take a break. Butt when we get back your calls again. Seven four nine, seven thousand, one, eight hundred. The big one are the numbers. Mike Allen in for SLOWE seven hundred WL.
Wow.
Pretty funky there, Dave. Bet your back there in the control room stepping out for that good stuff. Anyway, nine p.
Thirty seven we are back, got open lines seven four nine, seven thousand, one eight hundred. The big one are the numbers. The first caller I believe that we took didn't seem to want to give Trump credit for falling gas prices. And you know, if anything, I think he deserves credit for that. I really do. I mean, you think about what he did with respect to drill baby drill, fracking, building new or facilitating the building of new facilities.
So he opened it up.
I mean, the idiotic controls regulations that Joe Biden had on the fuel industry, that's what killed it. So we got to give him credit for that. You know, it's still a deal no matter what. And Bill Clinton was elected because of this. If the economy sucks, President's going to get some grief about it. If it's great, the President is going to be touting it all over the place, thinking about and talking about touting things. I'm want to
preface this with this is from the White House. Put out a press release What's the data of this thing? November twenty fourth. It is titled more relief on the way as economic wins bring savings to gas pump Thanksgiving tables and what Trump does sometimes on these things, it's a minimum of him or the administration making the point that he wants to make. He leaves it to local media to do that for him because he doesn't believe he gets a fair shake from the mainstream media. That
would be the understatement of the decade. They hate him, They screw him at every turn. So you know, mister President, do what you gotta do. Just a few of them here kind of addresses the gas price then too, we were talking about.
This is from.
KDVRTV and Denver headline cheapest gas prices in Denver hit less than two dollars Sunday ahead of Thanksgiving weekend. Just a couple sentences of the story. Gas prices in December are trending down just in time for the busy Thanksgiving travel weekend, with one station in the city even hitting less than two bucks on Sunday. And I'd like to see that here. That's according to gas Buddy. I don't
know what that is. Just in the last week, gas prices in Denver I've fallen fourteen cents on the galling gallon, hitting two point four to seven per gallon. That was last week, anyway, gas Buddy reports that the number is lower than the national average of three dollars and three cents per gallon. Talking about that two bucks and two forty seven in Denver, So I do think you have
to give him credit for that. It's again, Biden had so many idiotic rules against fracking, and you know you weren't allowed to drill here, you weren't allowed to drill there. Of course he had to please and suck up to his radical liberal base of the environmentalists. So Trump could care less what they think, as could I. Okay, ksat TV San Antonio, Texas headline, san Antonio gas price is set to hit pandemic era lows for Thanksgiving. Just one
sentence on this one. San Antonio drivers may have noticed some interesting movement at the pump this week. Thanksgiving travelers are still expected to see cheaper gas at the pump compared to last year. Now ask yourself this question. Would there be besides five? Maybe would there be any mainstream news outlet, you know, Washington Post, New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC that would say that No, there's just no way, because I don't want to give Trump the credit for it.
Let's see if we can move on from gas prices here, what else has he got?
Okay?
This is from Shreveport, Louisiana. Thanksgiving dinner with turkey is bargain in Louisiana, where costs are below US average. Thanksgiving family feast to feed ten people in Louisiana this year is more affordable than any other state in the US except for Arkansas. I think they have a bunch of chickens in Arkansas. Is that where one of the big producers is.
I don't know.
Anyway, it's the cheapest in any state except Arkansas.
That's according to the American.
Farm Bureau Cost Survey, the cost for eleven market turkey basket eleven market turkey basket items including a whole frozen turkey in Louisiana and twenty twenty five is forty four seventy That's more than ten bucks cheaper than the national average. So you gotta have your Thanksgiving dinner in Louisiana.
And I'm here to tell you I did. I did.
My daughter went undergrad to spring Hill College that's in Mobile, about a two and a half hour drive to get to New Orleans. From there, my daughter made it I think about half of that time. Anyway, we had a Thanksgiving feast. I forget the name of the restaurant, but man, they do it up right down there, not exactly like we have here, but it was really cool.
It was good to do that.
So anyway, that just gives you an idea, I guess of what Trump. Thanks, as far as the price is going down on gas and other things. Hey, we got a call. Let's talk to Larry in Hamilton. Hey, Larry, how you doing doing well?
Mike, You and I are old friends.
I'm sure you know who I.
Am back in my top days around Coryan.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How you doing Larry?
I'm doing fantastic, glove listening to you even on a Wednesday, yeah day. Now, that previous caller that was somewhat negative about Trump, he's forgetting. What Trump is doing today is planting seeds for the future. He is a businessman, and you think for a minute he doesn't have influence on the pricing. Yes, he does across the country, all the
stuff that he's doing. People aren't giving him enough credit for all the stuff he's doing on a worldwide basis, But even at home, he's planting the seeds for economic growth in the near future. But it's not hop thing fast enough for the certain groups of people. And I think you're doing a fantastic job, are you too.
People people want the instant results though, Larry, I mean, that's just what we're geared towards in this society. They want it down and I don't want it down now. And it is going down, but it's still too high.
Fast, fast food, fast everything, driving up window to the bank, drive up window to everything.
Now think about this, let me switch gears.
For just a second.
Okay, So think about all the money that was going to the Somaulians up in Minnesota and the I mean, you talk about a crime that's that's ridiculous, and the big media doesn't want to talk about that.
Oh of course not no, of course not.
Well I thought it reached at least a billion, possibly more, just out and out damn theft. And I don't know whoever released that money to them ought to have to pay the price.
But you're absolutely right about that.
Well, remember when Trump came in, and there's a second or third day he got rid of that USAID agency that was, you know, throwing our taxpayer dollars around for sesame street for people in Egypt, shit stuff like that, you know.
And my last, but not least, that crap about telling soldiers that they don't have to abide by an unlawful order. Oh my gosh, what more can you do to undermine the integrity of our military by planting the seed that they can disobey an order. That's called treason. You get court martialed. Now, at the end of the day. I had a conversation with a coworker the other day about the illegal the gentleman that.
Was at the.
Children's hospital that blah blah blah when he was put into jail in Butler County.
Was he an illegal if of the United States.
The answer is yes, Okay, So the fact that he was a minister or whatever doesn't make any difference. That's that's such a kind of a wrong ideology. Well, because he is a minister, he should be treated different.
Nope, you know that that whole thing.
We're all to be treated equal. At the end of the day.
That was such the argument or discussion I was in with a coworker about that person being incarcerated. The fact is, on that day he was incarcerated.
Was he here illegally?
Yes, he was going to a process, but at the time he was here illegally. Therefore he should have been.
Dealt with otherwise it's predatory, you know, application of the of you know the law.
Right, Well, listen to this, maybe you heard it and it came from the view, So you know they're idiots that one of those persons on the view, I forget which one said it was. It's racist to call them illegal aliens.
I mean, what the hell.
They're they're here, they trespassed into our country trade of federal law.
They're criminals.
I mean, you can, you can try to minimize that as much as you want, but that's the case.
And we are in a point in this country.
God, I'll never figure this out where the left, the Democrats care more about people that trespassed into our country than they do ordinary Americans. I hope people are getting fed up with that, but I don't know.
I guess we'll.
See Michael calling them racist is putting lipstick on a pig.
I gotcha, Hey, man, I gotta let you know. Okay, thank you for the call so much.
Let's talk to lou in beautiful Harrison and I mean that, Hey, lou how you.
Doing, talk to you? Pat? Sorry about yourself?
Good? I'm good. I'm good. What you got for me?
And so I was listening earlier when you're talking about with.
The Thanksgiving comment about how a lot of people are just trying to hold protests about Thanksgiving.
What thing that kind of bothers.
Me is that, you know, yeah, it's very easy to focus on the past of what happened, but it's the whole purpose of the holiday itself is just to give thanks for the things.
That you have in the future, in the future.
And in now. Right man, It's like life is just too short.
And I'm not gonna lie, I'm not trying to boast, but I work in an emergency department, and so you can imagine, like how many times a day that we see things that are horrible, and it's just, you know, like I'll tell people all the time, like be thankful for the things that you have, because it could have been a lot worse than what it is right now. And especially it's like I'll tell you this, I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful for being an American, and I'm thankful for you.
Mike.
You're a good guy.
Thank you so much, Lou. I appreciate that. That's very kind. Thank you.
All right, Warries, buddy, you take care of yourself, all right, you.
Too, have a great Thanksgiving? All right.
Hey, we got Bill for Montgomery. Let's talk to him. Hey, Bill, you're on the air.
Bhi, Mike, can you hear me?
Okay, absolutely loud and clear.
Great, Mike, you actually helped me with an opinion piece in the Inquirer for supporting Orlando Sonza. Oh actually, yeah, So I'm actually calling about a couple of days ago. You had been talking about elections and how we've lost Hamilton County. And it's been one of my theories or observation for decades now that we have lost Hamilton County because we surrendered our public school institutions.
And what do you mean by that?
I think you're onto something, but what what, what exactly do you mean by that?
Bill surrendered the institutions?
And you know, and Mike, this didn't even conjecture. Randy Weingardner, she's still the second largest teacher union, awful, said that she believes politics should be in needs to be in the classroom. I know the teacher unions. Yeah so they And by the way, something I don't think most people were aware of until recently, Randy Winegardner and Becky Pringle, the presidents of the two largest teacher unions, serve on the Democratic National Committee.
I wouldn't doubt it. If you remember Bill during COVID. They found out that whether it was the NEA or AFT, both the two strong teachers unions, they were signing off on some of the regulations that Biden was putting in place for going back to work. They actually sent it to them. And let me tell you another boy, you hit a nerve here. I do my research for this show.
I've been doing it a long time. I like doing it. Never, not once ever have I heard either Randy Winingartner or the president of the other union say anything about educating our children.
Nothing.
It's all politics. They shake down their members for contributions. They're too damn powerful.
I think, right absolutely, and Mike as it pertains to that. And I'm in the process of writing another opinion piece into the Acquirer, which.
I don't know if they'll run.
Okay, I don't know.
Are you familiar with what's going on in the Sycamore Communities school system?
No?
No, not really what's going on with them?
So back in September of twenty twenty four, the president of the teacher union that it's the Sycamore Education Association. They're a local affiliate for the NEA, the National Education Association, which Becky Pringle was president of Okay and they're the largest teacher union. The president of the teacher the local teacher union went to a school board meeting. Several people felt she was intoxicated, which she later on a menuted that she was on sedatives and had an alcoholic drink.
Wow.
She exposed herself at least two to three times, which was caught in surveillance camera. Then she bullied a female co worker. Then she made a comment loud enough for other people in the area to hear that she's there was a black principal at the school honoring black students with an award, and she said, and I quote, what is an incompetent black man doing up there? Black and
man were synonymous. So long story short, Mike is the school board which has been the majority of the school board, has been supported, endorsed, and even funded by the teacher.
Yes, it really is. Bill. I'm running out of time, but that's good stuff.
Please call back, Okay, thank you.
You know, just one other thing to add to what Bill said.
What we have to do and I don't know how it went in this last election, and we were doing pretty good on it for a while. We have to get mothers fathers, people with kids in school on these local school boards. Again, Hamilton County's getting to be a tougher nut to crack for Republicans. But the school board races are down ballot races. That's where we would have a good chance. I think that has to happen. The other thing, parents have to look at the books that
their kids are bringing home. They have to do that to see what's being taught to their kids. You know what, My parents never had to do that, but because they didn't have to, they didn't have to. But I think I think parents now should do that. Hey, listen, we got to take a break for the news, but I think you're going to like this next segment. Dennis Whitehead. He's an author of a book about the Cincinnati Strangler.
I'll tell you what, if you're anywhere near my age ten years give or take, you're gonna really find this interesting talking about post see Laski, the Cincinnati Strangler, and he wrote a very very thorough book about it. And we'll talk to Dennis when we get back. Mike Allen in for Slowey seven hundred WLW. You want to be an Americanity News Radio seven hundred WLW Mike Allen Saturday. I do that at least once every time I sub for somebody else. We'll talk to you Saturday midday on Saturday.
I'm in for Slowney today, I'm in for Willie tomorrow. Hey, before we before Friday, thank you, Dave. Before we get to our guests, I just want to let you know what we've got cooking going forward. At ten thirty, Steve Gooden, Legal analyst, Steve Gooden, Boy, we're going to talk about the absolute debas buckle with the Komy and Leticia James indictments. Doj is not looking good on that, and going to ask Steve if the case can be refiled and what
the effect will be. At eleven o'clock, doctor John Lott, always a good guest, did a really good piece about how the left lies about children dying by guns, absolute lies, and we'll talk to him at eleven. Finally, batting cleanup is our friend Janie Heisel from the Epoch Times. She just fould a great story on the election a few weeks ago and how that relates to our journey into socialism or maybe not so anyway, Hey, before we do that, though, I've been looking forward to this if you are my
age or around there, you'll remember this. It just rocked this town. I'm talking about Postelaski to Cincinnati Strangler.
It was a huge deal.
And Dennis is going to tell you this whole community was just in such fear of this guy. Women were going out and buying more locks for the doors, the whole thing. Anyway, Dennis White had He's an ou gred a graduate of Hiring a university. He's a writer, photographer, and media producer. Again, like I said, from Cincinnati, but now living in Arlington, Virginia. Dennis, thanks for calling in this morning.
Good morning Mike.
Thanks for having me my pleasure. Yeah, you know, I'm sure you heard the intro. Did I sum that up right? And what I was going to ask you to do, if you could, is just give us an overview on what was going on in this city between December of I think it was sixty five, in December of sixty six.
Well, in essence, it was a period when Cincinnati really lost its innocens. Nationally, Vietnam was building the March for Civil Rights, it was well underway. There was violence attached to it. Tension was building and building in this period, so people were already on edge when suddenly women were being found strangled to death. Initially, pardon me, thought to be just on the east side of town. Suddenly the second murder was in Price Hill.
Yep.
Now police knew that they had a citywide problem. So that grew the tension, the anxieties, yes, with fear that people felt.
Well, I remember it and one of the things as kids, we absolutely hated this.
It was at that.
Time when the decision was made, probably nineteen sixty six October sixty sixth. Decision was made. You're not going out at night trick or treating. If you want to go out, you're doing it during the day. We were none too happy about it, but in retrospect, I think it was probably a good idea.
And again and it was moved.
It was moved to Sunday as well, so it wasn't even on the thirty first.
Okay, I didn't remember that, but yeah, people were bending over backwards. I think I mentioned to you before, I've got an old Irish grandma. She's passed away. This woman wasn't afraid of anything. However, when that Price Hill strangulation took place, she must had five locks.
On her door.
I mean, this place was just rocked by that. I think it's hard to convey and you can probably do it better than me. The feeling in this town during this time, just the feeling of fear and law enforcement's response to it. They threw a lot of resource is at this thing, don't you.
Think, Oh?
Absolutely absolutely? Well, you know, for for me personally, I was just a kid like you and uh my widowed mother who grew up in Price Hill went to school at Cedar Grove Academy right across the street from one of the murders. I was born blocks from, uh the murder that posted ELASKI was convicted of. So so this really was a it was it was neighborhood centric in some ways, not just Price Hill. It was the same in East Walnut Hills, right.
It was.
It was in Clifton as well. So it's spreading in a band across the city.
Yep. And it's I'm trying to go ahead.
Well, the killer left no clues. There were no identifiable clues. Now you have to remember that the that the the forensics of the time weren't simply fingerprints, fluids, blood, simple basic hair fibers.
There was no.
DNA that would not be until the nineteen eighties, So they had no evidence except that hair evidence pointed to a black man, but without specifics. They cast a net across the city, initially starting with men who had been who had previously had conditions for sex crimes, but then it began to spread to random people based upon calls in the station X. The police would follow up. Detectives, patrolmen would follow.
Up thousands, I mean thousands of clues, thousands of calls.
Let me ask you this, how many victims in all were they?
I know Barbara Bowman was the one that Lasky was prosecuted successfully on. But how many victims in all Dennis died at the hand of the strangler.
Well, the strangulation deaths, there were six. Barbara Bowman makes the seventh. Now there were also numerous There were also numerous assaults that that that occurred that did match the the d m O of the killer in certain ways, but it was but it was the it was the strangulation murders that that were the key. U Now, Barbara Bowman, while she died of stab wounds, did have a ligature wound around her neck. So that's what drew police attention to a connection to the strangler.
Gotcha. Let me let me ask you that question.
That was the one condition.
Okay, let me ask you this question too. You had mentioned at tench time. I had to Obviously there were racial issues and problems in the city of Cincinnati at the time. That probably compounded some of it because again, like you said, uh, they were looking for an African American man.
Is that a fair statement.
Yeah. Absolutely.
It exacerbated the existing tensions that had grown out of national frustrations with the civil rights movement. Finally succeeded in nineteen sixty five with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. So success was found that year, but tensions were still There wasn't enough in Cincinnati. There was a general feeling that while people of color could speak, the question was.
What were they being heard?
Was there more than just lip service being done in response? And the answer was no, not really, and so there was great deal of frustration over in action, local inaction. Now then you bring in police attention to black males across the city. At the same time, African American women were just as concerned.
Sure as white women.
The problem was they experienced non responsiveness when they when they would call.
Uh.
And during the during the panic really of the of the strangler, there were calls from Kennedy Heights about a car that matched the description of a car that had been cruising around Kennedy Heights neighborhoods. There was no response to it. There were there was no equal concern to that. So that all built it built and built.
Now.
A breaking point in the lasty prosecution was then the case of Oh goodness, I've forgotten his name, but there was a Cincinnati end car copy editor who was arrested on a strangulation murder. He had murdered his his girlfriend. They were both white.
He was off. The probation well received.
There were different times back then. Uh, let me ask you this. Uh they were. There was only one prosecution, of course, that being for the murder of Barbara Bowman up there on Ring Court in Price Hill. The first cop on the scene was a legend.
Uh.
Let's see, it was accept him.
Uh.
He everybody knows him. Yes, he was a young cop at the time. Though Mel Ruger was a prosecutor. I knew Mel just a little bit, a little bit.
Uh.
He was a legend as well, a hell of a prosecutor, absolutely a great prosecutor. The decision was made, although you had all these homicides, uh, just to prosecute on Barbara Bowman that murder and they got a conviction on that. What was the feeling of the community at the time about, Hey, look, you know, yeah, you got a successful prosecution of her murder, but what about the rest of him.
Give us an idea of what the feeling about that was.
Well, Actually, when Laski was arrested on an attempted assault charge that was bumped up to assault. When he was arrested, the media coverage was the strangler suspects.
In hand, We've got him.
So from that moment forward there was a general feeling of relief, made more so by the absence of further murders once he was in custody. And that remains the one pivotal point there. Those circumstantial The murders stopped when he was taking them.
I mean, no question, unequivocally.
Also, you point out in a book the judge in this case interesting Simon l Lease, Si Lisa, his dad. He's kind of a crusty old guy, according to what you have in the book, But a good judge, a very experienced judge.
He had been a I had his biography in the book, but hit a long career as a prosecutor, investigator, and as a judge that also gave him experiences in the Laski trial. He even went back to a case that he I think he was an assistant prosecutor in the nineteen thirties. He was seventy years old at the time of Laski's trial. There was a murder trial of the poisoning. It was Han and she was the first woman sentenced to die in the electric chair in Ohio. She had
poisoned them. And he is techniques as a prosecutor. Allowed Ruber to employee techniques in the trial that he had used in the Han case. Remember, And and then there was the the Abbott trial that preceded Laski's trial by not much but some of the same legal maneuverings that that that Ruber employed. Judge Lee was very familiar with,
and he allowed them to go into trial. And actually one of the key things was testimony that was permitted into the into the case in both the Abbot and Lasky that really put the nail in their coffins.
Yeah, you know, go ahead, I'm sorry.
Oh, it was this.
This was testimony that was related to the to the defendant, but not to the to the case. So in the case of Abbot, it was a one and he was one. A girl of sixteen years old. Abbot violently assaulted her because of anger, and that was brought into the case and it portrayed him in a very negative light. And when when that verdict came in as guilty, he walked away and said she did it. That testimony did it
to me. The same with Laski. The case was built on rather circumstantial evidence, but Lise allowed the testimony of an assault victim who accused Lasky of the assaulting, who was never tried. That her testimony, very dramatic testimony, was allowed into the trial, and that put jurors.
Over the top.
Gotcha, As we said, he was prosecuted successfully for the murder of Barbara Bowman up there in Price Shell, and he received the death penalty, but he was not put to death.
Why was that?
Well, nineteen sixty eighth the Supreme Court ruled be a death penalty constitutional. It took until nineteen seventy for that then to come down to the Ohio Supreme Court for Laski's case to be reheard under that decision, and his sentence was commuted to life in prison.
Then in nineteen seventy for parole.
A number of times, one when I was prosecutor did not get parole. I remember, kind of like a cop killer. We got the community all ginned up to send letters for the parole board, and he died in prison. I believe in two thousand and seven, only have a minute and a half or so left. I want to make sure, Dennis, that you let people know how to get this book. I'll tell you to make a great Christmas gift. It was one I'm not just saying this. It was one of the best books I ever read, right up there
with the Brick, a book by JT. Townsend. Just an easy, good read. How can people get that book?
Well, thank you, Mike.
It's available and I'm working on getting it into Cincinnati bookstores so it will be in in some in the coming days. It's available on Amazon, but you can you can order it online from any bookstore.
Okay.
You can go to your favorite bookstore and they can order explore you, or you can go online.
It's available everywhere.
Great, Hey, listen, we're out of time. I really appreciate this. There's never enough time. We could probably take a couple hours. But congratulations on the book. It is fantastic, I hope and I bet a lot of people go out and get it.
And again, it really would make a good.
Christmas present for people that are familiar with it and experienced it in one way or the other. But Dennis Whitehead, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Mike, thank you very much.
Okay, my pleasure, all right, And again, you just can't convey what the effect on this town was of this guy. And I think mel Ruger he caught a little grief, but I think his decision to not prosecute the others after the conviction on the Bowman murder was a good one. So anyway, very good book. If you're interested, you ought to get it. Hey, listen, when we get back, what an absolute debacle with the comy and Letitia James now
non prosecutions. DJ is not looking good on this one, and we're going to talk to our legal expert Steve Gooden about that when we get back. Mike Allen in for Sloaney seven hundred WLW. Hey, we're back Mike Allen in for Sloaney. Well, I'll tell you what if you follow the news at all, you know the situation with one James Komy and Leticia James. Boy, they were on Trump's list. The federal court. The federal judge, which I believe was a Clinton appointee or it is a buying appointee.
Dismissed the cases.
I don't know whether they can be refold or not, but I'm sure our next guest is talking about legal analyst Steve Goodin.
Steve, thanks for joining us this morning.
Hey, good morning, Mike.
Not DOJ's finest hour, was it?
It sure wasn't you know. You know, there's an old saying that you know that revenge is a dish best served cold. And these guys came in very, very hot and tried to indict Comy and Leticia James using sort of an interim prosecutor who who the judges found really wasn't properly appointed in the role. And the problem the Trump folks have is I think the judge is probably right. You know, she was an interum. You can have an interim US attorney for one hundred and twenty days, is
the one hundred and twenty days had run. They tried to make her kind of an acting US attorney. She was the only attorney in the room. Her name is hann Again Ashley hand Again, a former White House lawyer. She had no criminal experience, and it looks for all the world like she was sitting there specifically by the Trump folks and by Pam Bondi to indict these two.
So in all likelihood, when she was actually in the grand jury as the loan attorney presenting the cases for indictment against James and Komy, she really her paperwork had expired, basically, so they tossed the indictments. There is a pretty good argument they can be refiled, But with Comy it's going to be a little close. I mean, he has a five year statute of limitations. The statements he made allegedly were back in twenty eighteen. I think he did mislead Congress.
Whether it whether now that we know more about the underlying case, whether it actually rises to a criminal intentional misleading at Congress, we don't know. But he certainly made statements about the Clinton FBI leaks that were misleading to Congress. Yeah, but that's kind of where really really where that is. It's going to be fought out for a while. The Trump people are going to take an appeal. Oddly enough, they probably, it seems to me, have a better chance
of getting Letitia James' case refiled than Comy's. But also that was the least serious of the two. So we'll see what happens. But there's more more fighting to go. But I think Trump and his books lose this round on a technicality, but a pretty significant yeah.
And I just think the way it was handled was an abomination. Trump put out a truth Social post. It was about two or three days I believe before Pam, Bondi and d OJ took some action on this thing, and I just just bear with me. I want to read part of it at least. Okay, this is from Trump on truth Social Pam. It's like it's addressed to her. I have received over three hundred statements and posts saying that essentially same old story as last time, all talked,
no action, nothing is being done. What about Kmy, Adam, Shifty Shift, Letitia, They're all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done. And then we almost put a Democrat supported US attorney in Virginia with a really bad Republican past. Anyway, he goes on to say, last sentence, they impeached me twice and indicted me five times over nothing.
I couldn't agree. More justice must be served.
So I don't know, you know, I'm loath to criticize the president, but I will.
I think it's appropriate.
And maybe it's a lawyer and me, Steve, but as an attorney, did that offend you? Because it's just a blatant, a blatant.
Ploy to get these two prosecuted.
The norm the regular prosecutor wouldn't do it, so he's got to go out and get a different one.
Am I overstating the case?
No? I mean it's really reminiscent in a way of, you know, kind of what happened, you know at the end of Watergate, you know, when Nixon couldn't find that he wanted to fire the special prosecutor and they kept Goody, and there's that famous light on the Nixon James who says, I don't you know, just keep firing people until someone will go fire him, you know, And they said, I don't care if we're down to the janitor at that point,
you know, I want some of the fire. So when it's all about the result you want and you're the executive, that is a really bad and dangerous place for us to be in a republic. And everyone says we're a democracy, We're really a republic and we have a very fine balancing of the three branches. And it really is a bad day those posts he puts out. You know, he is his own worst enemy, the president is on this rhetoric.
Any chance of having anything that looked like an impartial and real indictment here of either of these two, you know, is you know, it was just out the window the second he made that post. I mean, even if the indictment had somehow, the indictments had somehow stood up and gone to trial, I think you know that that would have been something that would have been presented to the jury and really cast out on whether or not this
was this was impartial. And I mean, look, I understand that I've never been or will be president of the United States, but I can only imagine the president's anger at the way he was treated. There is no question, you know, you lover hate Trump. I think most lawyers would agree that the system was weaponized against him and perverted against him in ways that just we're an abomination
as well. The while he was out of office, I mean the particularly the Latitia James case, something that kind of case that had never been brought New York State. The statute had never been used that way. They were really just making stuff up to get him. And I get that he's angry, but my god, he won the next election. You'd think that that would be enough to you know, he's president again. I mean that that you would think that would would suit some of those wounds.
But it looks like he does want to go back after these folks. And look, Tony, and I get the anger at Komy. I mean that when you when you really scrape it all away. Comy was asked before Congress, you know, did you leak to someone at the FBI or tell them to leak at the FBI? And his answer was no. But then we now learned that he actually did give the leak to an FBI contractor who
was a friend of his. And he's kind of hanging on this sort of Bill Clinton kind of word persing thing of like, well, he wasn't a full time employee even though he worked there, so and I understand how frustrating and aggravating that would be when you see that one of your enemies and someone who has been weaponizing the justice departments doing this sort of thing. But that's really not a not a great thing to hang a
criminal case on. And it really does, I mean, like really, what it looks like here is he finally found someone who was willing to put their law license on the line and go in and jam this indictment through. And it's notable. Someone who's never i guess said zero criminal practice, experience, defense or prosecution actually went in, it spoke to the grand jury and I and this is rare. It wasn't even now we know it wasn't even unanimous at the
grand jury. There were grand juries jurors, even under these weird circumstances, who were saying, we don't think we should indict these two. Yeah. So, I mean, it's really snaked that from the beginning from the truth social post all the way down to the selection of this particular attorney who didn't have any kind of experience, to the fact that she was the only attorney in the room, which is also, as you know from grand jury days, kind
of unusual. Usually you have not always, but you have at least a paralegal or somebody else, you know, in the room with you privately with the grand jury to kind of fight things out. So everything about it just stinks, and in a weird way, they're kind of lucky. I think that the judge pulled the trigger, or you know, you pulled these indictments on the early side, rather than let all this get fleshed out in really gruesome detail,
either through a motion practice or a trial. I don't think it would have reflected well on anybody well.
You know. I mean, maybe it's a lawyer in me, as I said, But the minute I saw that truth social post, I thought, oh my god, this is going to come back and boomerang. I get his anger, and buddy, I mean, if anybody has a right to be pot about the way they treated him, he does. And you know, I'm also a realist about lawfare, you know, politics, Steve, somebody does something to you, by god, you're going to do it back to them. So I really don't have
a problem with that, But why telegraph it. I mean, I guess there's probably.
No one, not even millenia.
Who could say whoa WHOA? Don't send that out. You know, it just it looks horrible. Let me ask you this. I guess it's a long way of asking you a question. Have we've seen the last of this thing? I know Trump won't let it go, but do you think that you know they're going to reindict and candem It was a dismissal without prejudice.
I didn't get a chance to look at it the decision.
Uh yeah, yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't speak to prejudice at all. He just tosses it. And then you know, there's a statute and I think it's eten USC three two two eight that basically says, you know you you know, the statute of limitations is sort of told under certain circumstances, you know, when there's when there's issues and questions about the indictment. But all that being said, I think they were they were right against the line of being out
of time on Komy anyway. I mean, because the statement's tackling the way back to twenty eighteen. Uh and there's a five year statute of limitations there so, and there's also an argument because that even though it's told typically in a situation like this, because there's prosecutor on this conduct that's being alleged. You don't get that benefit of the doubt, and you know, the timeline doesn't stay. So I mean, they're going to appeal. Bondie's already said she's
going to appeal. But I particularly lose it and this really is the end of this, and if they're smart, they let it go. And again, this is a situation. It's amazing to me because you've seen it in state courts, and I've seen it state courts where whether it be police officers, prosecutors, whatever, you let your emotions get the better of you and bad decisions get made. It's amazing to me that you still see that human element and all these emotions coming into play all the way up
you know, to the presidency. I mean, this is just a classic case of a guy getting really mad and telling the prosecutors to do something they shouldn't have done. They probably should have should have held their ground. I can only imagine what the conversations were. I don't know about with Milania. But you know, Pan Bondy is a real prosecutor. You know, Pambody is not just some politic co actor. She's really done the job and she's the
ag of Florida and a well regarded one. So and the amount of time this took, I can only imagine there were many many trips down to the West Wing to try to talk them out of this, uh and to try to get him to stand down. But they eventually he said, it's like it's like in Watergate. They finally found in Watergate, the tribute question. It was finally Robert Young, Robert Borke, who was the guy that was fired Archibald.
At the time.
That's right. Yeah, they kept firing people and ele leading them to acting Attorney General just to fire, you know it just like could fire the special prosecutor, you know, and here they finally you know, the the you know, the the Robert bork Here is this Hannigan lady who I guess had briefly worked in the White House as a civil attorney, and then he made her the you know, the acting or interim and then acting attorney up in in Virginia that has in Wooden Pert of Virginia, that
has a jurisdiction over a lot of the DC stuff. So and she was willing to go do it. So, I mean I also predicted in some way or fashion, someone's going to go after her law license over this. I was going to that's probably going to be the biggest problem. Yeah, I think you can count on that.
You know, somebody who was criticizing the whole thing. I kind of likened it to just a citizen coming off the street walking into a grand jury room and getting an indictment because of the technical stuff. But what do you think is to become of Lindsay Halligan? Apparently from what I read, she's a very good civil lawyer, but had no business in the grand jury room.
Oh yeah, there's look, I know brilliant civil lawyers who really you know, you know who if you sent them into the grand jury today with no training would have you know, it would flail. I think, Mike, I worked for you. I don't think I was allowed to walk even near the grand jury room for two to three years. I think, you know, you really, you know, really got to know what you what you're doing. You really have
to understand the criminal law. There's a lot of nuances to it, from being able to count the time on the statute to what evidence is admissible and so forth. So yeah, being brilliant's got nothing to do with it. It's about being trained. I mean I would think that, you know the hand again. I mean, I think there will be some action against her law license. Probably when the dust settles here, they're going to lose the appeal. But she's somebody that looks to me to be kind
of ready made for TV. I would expect to see her out of politics pretty quickly. I mean she looks like a model. I mean, if there was ever like a perfect profile for a Fox News TV commentator, it would be miss Annagan. Okay, So she does have that look a lot of the women have in the Trump world. So she has that kind of Melania kind of vibe. So I always see her now that she has to obtain some notoriety, bouncing out of politics pretty quick into
some media role will be my guy. I have no reason to believe that, just my guess.
Yeah, the whole thing is a big old cluster. You know what.
Hey, we got about three minutes or so new things happening on the PG sitting field front. Can you tell us about that because I missed it?
Was it motions?
Yeah? There were some Yeah, there were a flory of violins this week. It's really interesting, you know PG, I said, Ville, you know, was convicted of basic classic quid pro quo corruption by a federal jury here in Cincinnati and sentenced to I think fourteen months in prison, served about five or six of them. You know, it was fighting it on appeal and then just sort of out of left field.
Although Washington it seemed out of left field, we now know there was a lot of lobbying going on the Trump Partington basically sort of you know, there's you know, and Trump has been pardoning a lot of folks around the county or country that he feels are were wrongfully convicted in some of these public corruption cases where he
thought entrapment was used. And the FBI tactics are pretty tough, but a very very rare kind of circumstance to your PG is pursuing his appeal even though he has been pardoned. It is and it's kind of interesting, and we don't know whether or not the Supreme Court is going to truly entertain it. And what's interesting here is the Trump Justice Department has sort of now taken a different position. They want this to be over with. At this point of view is look, we don't want you to keep
fighting here. It's going to impact other convictions, you know, and PG has made it very blue. He wants to, you know, he wants to change the law around this. He thinks that the whole quid pro quo corruption law, particularly the Supreme Court case called McCormick that basically says, look, you know, if you accept the campaign contribution in exchange for your position on a particular vote or a particular project, that that is illegal. And that's been the law since
nineteen ninety one. And he wants to go after that and address that. And it's very interesting that it feels like when you read these briefs, basically, the Justice Department and it clearly feels kind of burned by Sittenfeld because they're like, you know, we got you, you got the pardon pal, you know, but now you're still fighting us, and not just that you want you want your conviction vacated.
You want it to be like it never occurred. And they do seem to really be going after this McCormick decision, which has really been the law of the land. And I always felt, and I know there's a lot of conservative commentators who are on the other side of this, I always felt it was a common sense line to draw because otherwise, you know you're going to be sitting down with donors and talking about specific votes. And if you're in the state House.
You're right, you're right, and unfortunately we are out of time. I watched a lot of the trial for Channel nineteen. I know you did as well as a legal analyst, and I don't know. I mean, I don't think he crossed the line. I don't think anybody knows what the heck the line is. But at any rate, Steve, I appreciate you calling in and not filling us in on this stuff anytime.
Have a good Thanksgiving that you too, Steve.
Thank you you you know I mean, And I get some guff from people. I am sympathetic to pg's situation. When you're in politics, you gotta raise money, you gotta be aggressive. And from what I heard, I don't know that he crossed that line into bribery. And you know what, I'd like to see the Supreme Court take a look at it see if maybe they can kind of clear it up a little bit. Anyway, we got to take a break for the news, but when we get back,
we're going to talk to doctor John Lott. He's going to talk about how the left lies about child gun deaths, and I think you'll find it interesting. We'll do that when we get back Mike Allen and for Slowey seven hundred WLW. You want to be an American idiot?
Hey, we're back Mike Allan in for Sloaney. Well, i'll tell you what.
The left absolutely loves to skew the figures on gun deaths, and that's true adults, gundest and children as well. Well, somebody's doing a deep dive into it and showing that it's just a lie, it's not true. That person is our next guest, doctor John Lott. He is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. And I'll tell you what. I checked that out. Really great website, crimesearch dot org. A lot of good stats in there. So anyway, doctor
lot welcome to WLW. I know it ain't your first time.
Thanks for having me back on. I appreciate it.
My pleasure, my pleasure. Hey, tell us about the piece that you wrote. I think for the federalists, I thought it was great and you make a very good case that they are exaggerating at a minimum, the figures about that. And it's titled Democrats Favorite Talking point about children and gundests is a lie tell us about that.
Thanks.
People can find a copy of it at our website at Crimeresearch dot org. But look, you know, about fifteen years ago or so, Michael Bloomberg's gun control groups basically did focus testing to try to see what types of claims that they could make that would move the needle the most on the gun control issue. And what they found was, particularly for women, if they made the claim that gun deaths were the number one cause of death for children, they could they could have a big impact
on that. And so you've been seeing a lot of claims out there since then that try to make that claim.
The thing is that.
People can go to the Centers for Disease Control website. They have very detailed data on deaths from many different types of causes. And whether you define children as those under eighteen or those under fifteen or some other age group that's lower, what you find.
Is that motor vehicle deaths I'll outnumber it.
And if you have something like underage fifteen, not only the motor vehicle deaths out number, but things like suffocation deaths are like twice in the latest year that's available twenty twenty three, suffocation deaths are more than twice the number of deaths from firearms. The thing is also how they define firearm deaths. What they do is they add
together homicides, suicides with firearms, and accidental deaths. The problem is most people I suspect think that homicides and murders are the same.
They're not.
Homicides are murders plus justifiable homicides by police civilians, And so even to get the numbers as close as they do, they're having to include things like a seventeen year old gang member who was let's say, pointing a gun at a police officer and shot by the police officer, as you know, as a firearm step.
And in some sit that's true.
But the notion behind I think pushing this is just to take guns away, abandoned guns. I assume they're not going to abolish guns from police officers.
But you know.
It to me, lumping together an innocent victim who's killed versus a situation where you have a criminal who's trying to kill somebody else who stopped those are just not the same things that.
Are going on there. And what you find is.
About seventy five or so of the homicides involve fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year old gang members. Even if you're looking at, you know, the deaths for those under eighteen, and I think that's you know, questionable whether or not you want to include those, because when you see these news stories or others, they'll start off with a story about, you know, a child.
Dying from an acidal gun shot.
In the home.
And if you look at the data from let's say twenty ten to twenty twenty, you'll find about thirty two on average of those deaths a year. You know, be nice if it was zero rather than third two, But even two thirds of those of those thirty two deaths are gun shots accidentally fired by an adult male, usually in there mid to late twenties, who have a criminal record and it's illegal for them to own a gun to begin with, and who are very often either drug addicts or alcoholics.
So you know, these.
Are not normal, law abiding people who do most of these accidal gunshots.
Even for even if you want to include those, what about.
The situation with suicide? Can you address that?
Sure?
Well, I mean, they're not that many suicides that are involved for those underageteen eighteen or under fifteen.
It's a small number, like with accidental gun does.
But the thing is also you know, again the notion is simply if you just got rid of guns, you wouldn't have the suicides occurring. Well, we've tried banning guns in parts of the United States. Washington, d C. And Chicago banned handguns. The vast majority of suicides involve handguns, and other countries have either banned all.
Guns or all handguns.
So what you find is that while they're in firearm suicides, total suicides don't change. There's really no statistically significant change at all in terms of total suicides. And so basically what happens is that if you have somebody who's suicidal, there are lots of different ways for people to commit suicide, lots of different ways for them to commit suicide which have you know, quote unquote an equal success rate or even a slightly higher success rate to using a firearm.
People who hang themselves.
Or jump off a tall building or structure, or walk in front of a train or a bus. Those are all ways that people could commit suicide that have you know, success rates that are similar to using a firearm.
Let me ask you this, and you've got a paragraph in your piece on this at the you got the Washington Post, no surprise there, you got a blaring headline why guns are America's number one killer of children. Then you got, of course NPR their headline firearms overtook auto accidents as the leading cause of death and children. You just demolished that argument, and of course the BBC's got to get involved. Gun desks were the leading killer of
US children. In twenty twenty, something happened over in the UK. I think that you addressed. I think it was at the very end of the piece where what they're doing with gun control over there hasn't helped anything.
All right.
Well, you look, you have a whole island nations that have tried to ban guns. In the UK, they banned all handguns in January nineteen ninety seven, and what you found. What you found was that after they banned it, over the next eight years, homicides increased by fifty percent.
It was only.
After they had about an eighteen percent increase in the number of police officers in just a few year period of time that they were finally able to bring down the homicide rates back to about what they were prior to the band that was.
There, and that's what you see in other countries.
I mean, look, I know when we had the bands in Chicago and Washington, TC gun control advocates say, well, you know that wasn't a fair test. You can't expect it to work because people could stole get guns from the rest of Illinois, or from Indiana, or from Maryland to Virginia. The problem is that doesn't explain why homicide rates went up. It may explain why they didn't go
down as they were predicting at the time. But you could look at island nations, whether it be the Republic of Ireland or Jamaica or the Solomon Islands or other places which have banned either all guns or all handguns, and every single time, murder rates go up and suicides remain unchanged.
And there's a simple.
Reason why murder rates go up, and that is you may take a few guns away from the criminals, but if you're primarily disarming the law bidy good citizens out there, you make it easier for criminals to go and commit crimes, and you actually see an increase in total death.
Let me ask you this question. I have always wondered why, and I've got a theory why the left and their cohorts in the mainstream media keep pounding this thing. You know, it's all about the gun, all about the gun. They never talk about the person behind the gun, and that's juvenile and adults. I mean, my thought is they're just it's easier to do that rather than confront the real problem, which is the person. Do you have any thoughts on that.
Yeah, Look, reducing crime isn't rocket science. You have to make it riskier for criminals to go and commit crime. To do that with higher rest rates, higher conviction rates, longer prison sentences, but also allowing victims to be able to go and defend themselves. All those things make it riskier for criminals to commit crime. And I guess what I would say is a couple of things. One is, at least they're consistent across the board. You know, you
look at a lot of these democratic cities. They don't want to make it risky for criminals to commit crime in terms of law enforcement arresting them or punishment. You know, there are plenty of examples that we can give about how they immediately release the criminals that are there that they don't want to make them serve time in prison.
But not only do they want to make it less risky for criminals to commit crime in terms of law and force in the criminal justice system, they also don't want to make it risky for criminals to commit crime in terms of letting victims be able to go and defend themselves. Look, you know, one of the big puzzles to me is Democrats will go and talk about racial
justice in terms of prisons. So you will have people like you know, Alvin Bryde, the district attorney in Manhattan, New York City, or others Soros prosecutors who will say that you want to have people in jail equal to the racial percentage of their population. So if blacks make up thirteen percent of the population, they should make up thirteen percent of those in prison. Here's the problem, who do they think the victims of crime are? Victims of
crime tend to be very similar to the perpetrators. Ninety percent of blacks are murdered by blacks. So if you're going to be you know, lenient on the criminals that are there, it means that people who are similar in terms of race and socioeconomic status are going to be the victims so why not care about the black victims that are there. You know, over half of the murders in the United States are committed by blacks, even though they make up about thirteen percent of the population.
A lot of that is drug.
Gang violence that's there, but they're killing other blacks overwhelmingly, And you know, it seems to me we should care about the victims there and try to keep them safe more than we should worry about the racial color of the people who are committing the crimes. But you know, there's a more basic issue also about why it is that liberals don't trust people to have guns for protection. And I think he sees again consistently across the board.
You look at something like Obamacare. Obamacare basically takes away people's choices for what's going to be covered by their health insurance. The only choices you have under Obamacare is basically the size of the deductible that you're going to have. But what's covered, whether you're a seven year old woman,
you're still covered for childbirth, that's there. You know, there are a lot of other weirder things that are in there too, and so you know the problem is if you don't trust somebody for being able to choose what their health insurance is going to cover. You're not going to trust them for something like whether they're going to have a weapon or not. And you know, it just it just comes down to whether or not you think people are able to make decisions for themselves in many situations or not.
No, and I get that. You know, I've been in criminal justice system for fifty one years in one form or another, and I can tell you right now, let's just say Trump signed an executive order tomorrow banning all guns. These people are going to be able to find guns probably pretty darn easy.
You're probably you're probably familiar with it.
There's a phenomena called community guns where people in the neighborhood will go use the gun, do whatever they do with it, and put it back for someone else to use. It's just naive to think that you're going to ban your way out of this problem.
Mate.
It's just it's frustrating because a lot of people are dying, right.
No, I mean, I agree with you.
Look and the major source of the legal guns are it looks like our drug gangs, you know you have. It's not like a drug gang can go to the police and say, look, this other gang stole or drugs, can you help us get them back. They have to set up their own little militaries in order to protect
that extremely valuable property that they have. And if they're going to have a lot of weapons, they're going and they can make money selling drugs and they can make money selling weapons, They're going to do both.
That's there.
You know.
You can look at a country like Mexico, for example, Mexico used to be fairly unregulated in terms of gun ownerships. In nineteen seventy two, they essentially had very strict rules limiting guns. Only one gun store in the country, run by the military. The most powerful gun that you've been able to buy since nineteen seventy two is a bolt action twenty two caliber short round rifle. That's not the type of gun that that drug gigs are using, our
cartels are using in Mexico. And yet the murder rate in Mexico has more than doubled since nineteen seventy two.
You know, so if I could click my.
Fingers and cause all guns in the United States to disappear and all illegal drugs, how long do you think it would be before illegal drugs start coming back into the United States supply in twenty minutes. If you're at I'll passo.
Yeah, I agree with you, Doc. Unfortunately we're out of time here. I really appreciate this discussion, and you know, I also too want to pitch again the Research Center, I mean the Crime Prevention Research Center.
They really do a great job. It's a great website.
And anyway, doctor John Lott, thank you so much for educating us on this subject.
Well, happy Thanksgiving and people can find more at crimeresearch dot org crimeresearch dot org.
But thank you.
Okay, thanks doc. All Right, doctor John Lott. You know, and the left is going to continue to do it too. I mean, god forbid they could tell the truth about something in the media, and obviously this is important. Hey, we to take a break for the news. But when we get back. Last segment, we're going to talk to
Janis Heisel of the Epoch Times. She's got a great story she just filed a couple of days ago about the last selection and you know, the question being are we really headed to socialism or not?
So we'll talk to Janis when we get back.
Mike Allen in for Sloaney seven hundred WLW. Hey, we're back Mike Allen seven hundred WLW before we get to our next guest. There's a story breaking a big, big, big fire.
I guess it's in downtown Hong Kong.
I didn't get a chance to really read anything about it, but boy, I'm looking at the visual and it's bad. I think they're reporting, Oh my goodness, they're reporting thirteen deaths so far. So just wanted to let you know
about that. Hey, despite the socialist surge in New York City, and I'll be they've got a big one with their new mayor, you know, moderates one in most other places, So maybe it's not as bad as we seem to think here to talk about it as a reporter who did a deep dive on it, not just a perfunctory article, but a deep dive on and I'm talking about Janie Heisel from the Epoch Times. Janis, thanks so much for calling.
Us this morning, So thanks so much.
I've got to tell you it's interesting for me as a reporter on the ground to see how things really are versus how they are often portrayed. Yes, and I did go to Minneapolis to cover the mayor's race there, and that's how I got this idea for this story to kind of compare and contrast what happened in Minneapolis versus what happens in New York and elsewhere. I actually also relied a lot on an article that I saw by the Manhattan Institute which kind of had sort of
the same concept that I did. And the idea is that you know, in Minneapolis a lot you know, it's a lot smaller of a city. It's not in the spotlight the way New York it typically is, but you know,
it was very interesting to see that them. There is an incumbent kind of more mainstream Democrat mayor named Jacob Fry, and he was challenged by what they call the mini Mandamy, a guy named Omart I'm not sure from saying his name correct correctly, but he is a He was involved in the state government there in Minnesota, and there was some you know, fair amount of like regional buzz and some national buzz over that because of the fact that he is also a Muslim and had some other democratic
socialist policies that he shared similar to those of Mandanmi in New York. So in looking at these two situations in Minneapolis, the democratic socialist guy lost to the more moderate Democrat and.
That how close was that race?
I read, but I forget.
You know, here's the problem which he's describing what happened in Minneapolis. They have this crazy ranked voice voting that we in Ohio don't understand. I had to like spend such an amount of time just to understand the bottom line. What happens is voters can pick. They can say I want Mike Allen is my first choice, he is my
second choice, and Joe Schmoll is my third choice. So if Mike Allen doesn't get fifty percent of the vote in the first round of votes being counting, it goes back to say, okay, round two, how many people have Mike Allen as his second choice? And then if Mike Allen had you know, comes out ahead on that second round, then with at least fifty percent of the vote, then Mike Allen would win.
So that's how it works.
And it took me awhile to come up with that very rudimentary description of how it works. So initially the initial vote scout, I will say there was a ten percent divide between the incomment mayor and that Democratic Socialist challenger. So I think most people you know, again, right choice voting kind of show the monkey wrench into the calculation. But most people would say that was a pretty comfortable margin,
and he, the incumbent, did pretty much say that. But he also didn't want to claim victory prematurely, so on election night he waited till the next day and then you know, it did get declared that he was the winner in the second round of the county.
You know, you make the point in your story about gallup polling. I guess I think it's in September, the latest polls showed that the Democrats are the only partisan group of the three meaning Republican, Democrat, independent that views socialism more positively than capitalism. Released in September, the poll showed sixty six percent of Democrats viewed socialism in a positive light, and that's for the first time in that poll's history, fewer than half of the Democrats it was
forty two percent favor capitalism. For Republicans, it was it was what you think, what you would expect from them. But I'm sure sounds to me janis like they're not backing away from it.
What do you think about that.
Well, there are indicators like that out there suggesting that you know, this socialism creep, especially when people put on the word democratic in spite of the word socialism. People, that sounds better, at least, this is the vibe I get from talking to people. That sounds better. It sounds okay to a lot of people. But then we roll
down to what the policies really would do. A lot of people will probably buy a lot more concerned if they really really looked into some of that, because it does some of them more radical socialist policy.
You do talk about.
Things like, you know, community ownership of businesses rather than you know, independent ownership and property, and on and on, erosion of personal rights because it's all being done for the good of the people, so to speak. And so there's so it'll be interesting, as my article points out, what we're seeing across the country does appear to be this creep of socialism into especially through a lot of people who lean Democrat or are Democrat, but Republicans rejecting it.
I mean, only fourteen percent of Republicans look favorably upon socialism. So it's kind of like the Republicans are holding the line, but independences are in there too holding that line. Thirty eight percent but viewed it favorably. Wow, only thirty compared to you know, much greater percentage of the sixty six percent of Democrats socially socialism positive manner. So very interesting
trends going on in politics right now. And people are looking to New York to see if Mandami takes a really difficult situation there in New York and it becomes more of a big mess, people are going to go, whoa, do we want that for our community? So they're all eyes are on New York very much so. But I wanted to kind of also open people's eyes to maybe New York's not the norm. And it's hard to say right now.
No, you're right, and that is a good part of the of the op ed piece. You know what, I think we're all kind of an uncharted territory here. But the thing, and you know, you can weigh in on this if you want. I had never been able to find, and I challenged people on the left an example where socialism has worked either in a city or a country. I mean, did you run into any of that, any anybody facing that reality?
You know, That's something I'm still looking for to.
Either.
But and I don't know of anybody who has give me.
A call if you do.
But no, that's that's a great point. It's it's one of the biggest arguments I hear on the side that goes against socialism or democratic socialism, whatever brand name you want to give it.
Uh.
And so once again, it's just going to be a very interesting time for everybody to keep an eye on what is going on in New York. But also maybe it was you know, at least take a glance over what happens in Minneapolis over there. That mayor has been in charge for the past eight years and he had to weather the whole George Floyd thing. My article points out when George Floyd was was killed in police custody, as we all remember, places especially Minneapolis, were on fire.
People were just really really outraged, and that video you know, did shock people's conscience for sure. But with that said, the mayor, while condemning some of those actions of the police, said, you know, we don't need to cut, you know, defund the police. That doesn't help us. And he faced a lot of heat for that. And I was in Minneapolis and saw that. To this day, there are signs against the mayor in people's yards. There are Black Lives Matter signs,
you know. There, there's a lot of palatable and visual signs that the mayor faced a lot of pushback over his refusal to defund the police, which was a big push there.
What the heck is wrong with those people? I mean, I don't get it, But hey, let me ask you. Did you happen to see any footage of the Mondommie visit to President Trump in the Oval office?
And if you did, what are your thoughts?
Well?
I did take a look at that, and what was I heard? One person described the encounter as rather collegial, so they exchanged some pretty copsteak barbs back and forth. But I guess maybe there's just sort of a recognition at least. This is just my impression that you got to work with the guy somehow and Trump, people who know Trump have all told me, and I think he's even publicly admitted this in many ways. Yet he is a New Yorker at heart.
He does love of New York and it's really where he made his name, literally on the skyline there.
And you know, he does want New York to succeed and to soar, and he doesn't want the place to crash and burn. He loves the place. So if that means, you know, doing what he can to sort of work with what he's what he has to work, which is the elected mayor. Now you know, but I also got the feeling that you know, and this is again based on just my observations of Trump, and I think most people would agree that Trump has a history of you can make nice with Trump, but you really cross him.
He doesn't suffer that gladly, No, no question about it, No question about it.
Hey, I wanted to ask that too, with the situation with if you want to possible breaks on the socialism movement, you make the point very well in the article Jannels that the various city councils, especially the one in New York City Mondommie's not going to be able to do whatever the hell he wants.
Is that accurate? That's how I'm reading it.
Oh yeah, I interviewed a man who very succinctly put it that no single mayor or single person could turn an entire city communist or socialist or whatever you want
to call it. And you know, that's what the American system of checks and balances, you know, you know, it's one of the saving graces of our system is that, you know, you can't just go in and make these sweeping changes, like the money is under under perhaps state control for some of these things that he wants to do, like the free bus rides for everybody and things like that. So if you can't get that funding, that proposal is
going to go nowhere, right right. So one guy I interviewed, who was the former sheets of staff for the current mayor Eric Adams. He told me that some New New Yorkers really looked like a skance at these proposals and said, wait a minute, this seems misleading. He can't do that, And so he was talking about how to end the article. On a note he pretty much said, you know, although New Yorkers are a little wary about what's going to
happen here, the New Yorkers are a tough lot. I think most people kind of know that you don't kind of most New Yorkers are kind of like Trump. They got kind of a rough edge and they they won't they don't put up with people messing around with him
too much. And you know, they're resilient, and you know, look at what happened after you know, nine to eleven, you know, and the idea is that he really believes that the city, regardless of what this one mayor does, is going to be quote a robust city and at the center of commerce, culture and tourism despite his politics.
You know.
And I gotta admit he has an impressive presence. He's only thirty four years old. In the Oval Office, he was standing, Trump was sitting very respectful to the president. I mean, I don't agree with anything he does but or will do. I think the thing of it is, though, it was nice to see a little collegiality for once, and I didn't expect that.
Some of Trump's base I don't think was too happy, I know, but you know, I think a lot of Americans would like to see people who are politically opposed able to set aside those differences to get things done. Just enough to do that, and they go back to scrapping if.
They need to.
You know, I don't get a chance. I really don't.
And it busts apart families too, I know all too well. You know, you got family oh way up on the on the top and politics way down. And nobody's ever seen a phenomena like that before. And somebody was saying the other day, and whoever it was, I valued their opinion that the DSM Diagnostic Statistics Manual. I think it's called, uh, they're thinking about making that an actual.
I don't know what you call it, mental illness or whatever.
I know this yeah, diagnosis. Yeah, you know. All I can say is that it is really sad. I think we all can cite examples from our lives where people have become so polarized that family won't talk to family. Coming up on Thanksgiving tomorrow, you gotta watch what you talk about. But I've even heard that quite a few people have given their their relatives like the brush off. Even if there wasn't an art, if they just found out that, you know, you voted for Biden, I can't
talk to you. You voted for Trump.
I can't talk to you. You're cut off.
I'm not you know, there's no wasn't even an argument. It was just sort of like after they found out the political leanings, the family's pretty much had an emotional divorce.
I guess you could call it right.
Well, I'll tell you what. And you see that on the left quite a bit. But I've never seen a case where and I'm sure there are some out there where a Republican said, hey, man, you know you voted against what I wanted.
You voted for Kamala. I'm done with you. It's all on the other side. It seems like, well that's what I've heard.
But I don't have any evidence to support that. But I like away from that. But if we have another minute, like there's something I wanted to raise.
Yes, we do have just about a minute.
Ye, what I'm working on right now. So I just turned in a story that is really really fascinating that talks about the massive welfare fraud that is happening in Minnesota.
Oh yeah, two years.
Of dollars the Somalians that were supposed.
To go to hungry kids, right the homes, et cetera. And Somalis were getting a hold with money by filing fraudulent claims, sending a lot of it back to Somalia and allegedly this is being investigated ending up in the hands of terrorists there that mean harmony.
The United States.
Yeah, I mean, so I read a little bit. It's unbelievable they're doing all this stuff with our money. It's just how that could have happened is beyond me.
So you wrote about it.
Is that what you're saying and hasn't been published yet. It is now making its way through our system. But I'm actually going to be doing a really in death support on that as well. Some of these scannels have been actually brewing. Charges were initially filed in twenty twenty two in one case and there are now seventy eight defendants charge. Wow, with that one scandal one of the three major scandals, and several more minor scandals too.
Wow.
Boy, that's going to be one to watch.
Janis really appreciates you coming in and filling us in on all this and hope we can call on you again.
Well sure, and I hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving. Play nice at the dinner table.
People, you have a great Thanksgiving, Janis, thank you so much.
Uh Hi, thank you.
Okay, all right, I'm overtime here. I did want to thank my great producer, Big Dave Keaton.
I will be back.
Tomorrow noon to three Willie shift, So have some good guests and hopefully some calls. Mike Allen seven hundred WLW